Sarazanmai

After the noble Kappa Kingdom falls to the Otter Empire, the Kappa prince Keppi loses much of his power and becomes helpless against the unseen Kapa-zombies. These zombies plague the world, and are the creations of the Otters and manifestations of people's deepest desires. With no other choice, Keppi must rely on three young boys: Kazuki Yasaka, who must carry a box with him wherever he goes; Enta Jinnai, Kazuki's childhood friend; and Tooi Kuji, a delinquent and a school truant.

By having the mythical organ called a shirikodama removed from them, the boys are able to become Kappa themselves and fight the Kapa-zombies. However, to defeat them, the boys must connect with each other via their minds, bodies, and—most importantly—secrets. As the Kappa Kingdom relies on these boys, they must reveal themselves as they have never done before, all the while learning that connections are fragile and truly precious things.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kuji, Tooi Main

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Jinnai, Enta Main

Horie, Shun Japanese

Yasaka, Kazuki Main

Murase, Ayumu Japanese

Niiboshi, Reo Supporting

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Akutsu, Mabu Supporting

Hosoya, Yoshimasa Japanese

Keppi Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Azuma, Sara Supporting

Teiko Japanese

Kuji, Chikai Supporting

Tsuda, Kenjirou Japanese

Otter Supporting

Kuroda, Takaya Japanese

Yasaka, Haruka Supporting

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Ootsuka, Manabu Producer

Suzuki, Kenta Producer

Watanabe, Masakazu Producer

Reviews

Jun 20, 2019

Stark700

Recommended

Sarazanmai is Kunihiko Ikuhara’s first director project since 2015. It’s been four years since we were graced by his body of creativity. This man is no doubt a legend. Whether you enjoy his style of creative content or not, he has been involved with outstanding anime that people still talk about today. These include the iconic Sailor Moon, the infamous Revolutionary Girl Utena, and one of the most bizarre shows of the past decade, Mawaru Penguindrum. Yuri Kuma Arashi may have been one of his lesser known projects but to make a comeback with this show called Sarazanmai is a feat of itself. Be prepared ... to be graced again by his absurd talent that few can step into the shoes in.

To ask the obvious, what is Sarazanmai really about? Looking at the synopsis will probably raise a few eyebrows just judging by its bizarre plot. Within the first episode alone, we are introduced to mysterious creatures based on the amphibious youkai demons known as kappa. Anyone who is familiar with Japanese folklore will recognize their character design. With their green bodies, duck-shaped mouths, and long legs, you can’t help but find this show to be decorated with bizarreness. Of course, this isn’t a big surprise considering Ikuhara’s unorthodox style. What actually make a break for the show is the unusual storytelling. With our main characters connected by the bizarre creature known as Keppi, this evolves into a labyrinth of crazy adventures.

Indeed, the opening episode of Sarazanmai is devoted to establish our main characters – Kazuki Yasaka, Tooi Kuji, and Enta Jinrai. Their personalities are what you can easily find in middle school students. However, the show’s story reveals more about their secrets with every episode. This connects to the overall tone of the main plot as the boys are tasked to collect the Dishes of Hope for Keppi. As strange as it sounds, the overall execution of this idea makes a lot of sense. It helps us understand these boys besides what they seem to be on the surface. On the other hand, there are also two policeman – Reo and Mabu who fights against Keppi’s Kappa Kingdom. The show sets a tone for carefully exploiting characters’ motives. With Reo and Mabu’s involvement in the plot, everything gets even more complicated.

But truth to be told, Sarazanmai itself is not an overly complicated show. Some longtime fans of Ikuhara may take time to get used to this anime as it’s his first directing project with a main set of male characters. However, don’t let that alarm you. His unorthodox style can still be felt with the overall craziness of the show. As one of the core themes, we have character connections. The show builds on how humans convey their feelings and hidden desires that each of us have. The elephant in the room can also be addressed as well with some noticeable BL tones. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact meaning of this show as a whole but understanding the connections and desires of the characters is ever so important.

On a scale of 1 to say…100, Sarazanmai can be judged for a variety of content. Ikuhara delivers his own creativity that does a lot more than just telling or showing. Sometimes, I feel like he can write just about anything he sets his mind on. Even before I watched the first episode, I knew what a ride this would be with the charismatic character trailers. The show seems to communicate through visual dialogues and graphic sequences. What we have here is more than just a straightforward story. In fact, many of the first episodes follows a monster of the week format but always staying connected to its central themes. Asakua (the setting of the show) is also a beautiful place for this show’s motifs. However, don’t be alarmed if you’re not Japanese. The show may take some more time to digest but once you get sucked into this, there may be no turning back.

Of course, it’s easy to say Sarazanmai is a niche type of show. You either like it or will reject it as a dumpster fire. Anyone who is unfamiliar with Ikuhara’s creative mind will get lost easily. Hell, it took me a half dozen times to get this show myself. Also, I wouldn’t say the story itself is outstanding. To believe that sounds outlandish considering at least half the show follows like a loop-like format. There’s not much plot developing despite different events happening. To say the least, I’m not too surprised by the overall content of this show’s plot elements. Still, there’s definitely praise to give for this show with how eyecatchy it is. The charismatic dances is one of the prime examples of being able to hook a viewer on in the early stages. While not being an idol show, it’s distinctive of how much energetic aura it contains. Just looking at a group of kappas performing in outrageous dances will get you staring at your TV.

Guess what? Kunihiko Ikuhara is back and he brings with him his avant-garde creativity. What Sarazanmai delivers is a show people will talk about for many reasons. The most common one is just how peculiar it is especially in regards with the overall execution. There’s a set of characters that brings you human emotions despite how offbeat the show may get. You may have to watch this more than once to really appreciate what it is. But for now, I just want to say, welcome back Kunihiko Ikuhara. Welcome back, you magnificent Brainaic.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 20, 2019

Bunille

Mixed Feelings

Imagine an anime just like the premise of Persona 5 by altering desires, but instead of stealing people's hearts you steal people's anal virginity.
And if that doesn't sound weird enough to you, then I guess you'd enjoy it.

This is some borderline-hentai super gay fanservice right here involving magical frog shotas, especially in the first few episodes, and I had no clue whether to like it or not at the beginning. It's definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but as I continued to watch the anime it gladly went somewhere, yet it was still so mediocre.

Just so people know, I've seen a couple of episodes of ... Penguindrum and never once did it step into something as risky and... weird... as this. No. That's not a good thing. Honestly, how childish and unaware are people?

Hypothesising from the first cover I thought that it'd be about adventures and summer; maybe even a surfing anime or something along those lines. Oh, and also, it's a musical now. Even if I somewhat thought that it would be beforehand. I can give it credit for that cop song though, it's really catchy even if it is immensely repetitive and I wholeheartedly respect the ED.

However, the symbolism is so obscure in certain areas that it seems really out of context, and even then the theory itself that people are saying doesn't really make that much sense, and this is coming from a person who has experienced those things. Most of the “symbolism” if you want to somehow call it that as it's your only way to defend this garbage, in some areas completely makes no sense. Otter symbolism? I thought they were supposed to be good? Or maybe the anime just showed that in such a poor way that I never understood? Honestly, if symbolism is your only excuse to like this anime then be off because there's much more that's better to it than the minor symbolism that everyone's looking too deep into. Yes, symbolism is effective and all and I understand it, but it's extremely minor and unique ≠ good. If anything, I actually preferred the earlier episodes.

The “leak” part of the episodes are great, and so are the three main characters with quite some good storytelling with them that's enough to make me rate this an 8 or so, however it severely lacks with its repetitiveness. Practically. Every. Single. Episode. That lasts for half of every episode going over the same thing and singing the exact same songs to the point that all of the great and entertaining just becomes irritating and obnoxious. Also, the animation is barely an issue, so commenting on how good it is will not affect my score. The only time I'd consider animation to be worthy would be through aesthetics used. And yeah, the animation is really pretty, but you could say that for most of MAPPA's work, not just Sarazanmai itself.

Some of the people's desires, if I were to even call them that, are so random that they're not even entertaining. I'm just like “what...?” One episode involved some masochistic guy who wanted to be a football and get kicked by his girlfriend, and that all begun because he took their football... Excuse me? No extra depth? No backstory to those random characters? Random waste of time by constant repetitiveness? Welcome to Sarazanmai, kero.
Sarazanmai has just become a generic comedy slice of life musical with yaoi frogs. Then you have an actual story beginning to develop two thirds into the anime? Don't look into it deeper. Really. That's not a pun or anything, I'm saving your skin so you don't have to appreciate absurd garbage and follow a bandwagon.

You think it's good because of the characters and whatever their “backstory” is? Just go and watch something else, where it does it a whole lot better than Sarazanmai. The story seems to give and never take, showing us a few things just because of the same scene. Constantly. Listen; if you want to express meaning through the same exact scene, then at least let us get to know more about every character beforehand and express emotion instead of looking cliché and done in a “different” way because never does that ever occur.
Almost everyone loved episode 11, but for me, it barely made sense, and not because I didn't understand it. One of the cops wanted a hope plate too, and they fought over it with a bit of screaming on both sides. Eh, that's about it. No need to overreact to the same thing that happens in every episode, but now it has a bad villain so eh! Aw no, I'm totally crying! This character that had no development just had a whole episode based on them to minorly shift their development upwards a bit. That makes sense and sounds entertaining, right? Well, even that is rare. Symbolism? Please, it would be trashy either way. I've forgotten most of the characters and I saw that episode only 2 days ago. That's how minor and irrelevant the side characters are.

Consider it as an alternate version of fanservice.

Overall, I do respect this anime a whole lot and it has somewhat begun to improve in certain areas, but its other areas and its severe repetitiveness are obnoxious as hell. I can't forgive that. And budgeting definitely wasn't an issue. With its good art, that's their own fault. I'm positively sure that it was intended to be repetitive as hell in the first place.

TLDR: Just because something's unique or is “symbolic” doesn't mean you should accept mediocrity and constantly reused scenes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 20, 2019

Karhu

Not Recommended

Sarazanmai is a prime example of a show that falls under style-over-substance, and those who are aware of the industry's state should already know that this field of anime hasn't exactly been very praise-worthy in the recent years. This is.... an addition to the overall selection we have. Not much more since its substance is so lacking that it lessens the impact of its style + those who know the director won't see anything new. Moreover, it recycles animation and entire scenes to such extent that it becomes partially skip-worthy. The repetition level is extreme, especially during the first half of the show.

If we look ... into the audiovisuals and directing, Sarazanmai comes with high values. Directed by Ikuhara Kunihiko, Sarazanmai was expected to be a polished work driven by passion, and, if we limit our judgement to production and ignore the repetition, it's easy give a *shrug* and say "yea, whatever". It's hard to agree and almost as hard to actually care. When exclusively looking into technical achievements, practically any term relevant to art, art directing, visual execution and animation techniques could be described with a wide spectrum of praising adjectives. I don't see the point in doing any separate writing work to go into detail with this. In short, if you want to see how good modern anime can look like, this is your must watch series from this anime season.. unless you have any other type of demands in which case watch something else because it still sucks.

And now to why this show is not very impressive from other departments.

Assholes. I am not entirely sure why this work was so deeply inspired by the action of inanimate objects and living things alike entering and leaving the anus(es) of all sort of weird looking monsters and whateverhteshits, but it happens to unbearable extent. It just feels childish and, well, shit. Something that could have easily been avoided ends up playing significant role in the series. Since this was clearly a driving factor in the director's own vision, it gives an unnecessary bad impression of the entire show already early on, and due to it being one of the scenes that are repeated almost every damn episode, it is hard to overlook.

Then we have the characters, who... exist. At least most of the time. I am already done with this criticism , by the way, because there just really is nothing to talk about for the characters are quite literally "nothing". Okay, bit more: It becomes obvious soon after the start that the entire cast is just a part of the animation and story, sometimes nothing but tools that exist in that moment for no other reason than to act out a lame joke. Due to this, the main characters' own, non-existing personas rarely have the opportunity to put weight on any action. To make it clear as possible: this show doesn't have a single character who could be considered an actual self-aware person who has their own will.

Finally we have the story. What the series is trying to say I do not know. There are weird creatures, beings that are neither dead or alive, otters/liars (word play that only makes sense in Japanese), bad and good people (note the lack of quotation marks), flying 'everything', police force ran by dudes whose entire beings are build around homosexual undertones, cross-dressing celebrities, at least one furry and kappa + gay frogs, also; truck-kun has his 1 second cameo just to run over someone. This could as well be placed in the character section, but since none of these described.. elements have any actual character value -- rather, their features are limited to what they look like and what type of a role they have in the story -- you see them here. The story events seem to be a rather obscure collection of highly random things that simply occur and not much more. Most things are rather loosely connected to each others because apparently, it's really important to make the whole thing seem mysterious even if it makes the entire story the opposite of coherent. It was hard to find any real importance or significance from the anime itself. Nothing seems to really matter much. Meaningless little tales that all play out the exact same way. After episode 01, you have seen it all, figuratively. The dialogue and Sarazanmai's themes center mainly around being connected, desire, something something meaning of life and also love exists + cats are cool, and desire twice. But at the end of the day, all it has here is its style, the rest is secondary, dragging miles behind the audiovisuals, which also got old immediately after the start.

All of these things mentioned above collide and create one hell of a weird combination. Series which core idea seems to be resolving around "desire" and "love" shows no passion, no soul and has personality-lacking characters that are not, at least in my standards, not even passing the requirements of being characters. My main question is this: How can this "desire" and "love" reach anyone under complete absence of resonance? Object don't feel either and self-insert is close to impossible. From viewer's perspective, all I can say is this show didn't even try to make me like it. "Look at me" is all it wanted. Then it asks to look at it again 10 more times, but essentially, you're just rewatching what it did already on the first time. It's not all, 100% bad, but each time when it looked like my opinion could change for something more positive, the series threw in some incredibly generic/filler-ish drama (such as the cameo of truck-kun, like mentioned before, and scene which slaughtered the heroic sacrifice trope) or alternative close up of a g-frog's twitching asshole giving anal-birth to an object the size of their own head. I am not making this up, just to be clear here.

Do I recommend this show, then? I watched it for the production and saw just about everything it had to offer by the end of episode 01. I also found it hard to accept the show without complaining about some of the decisions that were made, some of which were just downright cringey, others which just come out bland and left so little impression that they weren't enjoyable even in the given moment. The style wasn't enough to make me overlook all the things that I found to be meaningless or just garbage, which formed a decent pile by the end. After the finale, I can conclude this series is incredibly forgettable and, just like most modern anime; became irrelevant the second it ended. That's a "no" in English.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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